Newsletter

MOCA’s Project Atrium presents its first kinetic sculpture

Six months ago, when Brooklyn based artist Juan Fontanive made his first visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, he was impressed with the Haskell Atrium Gallery.

That was good because Fontanive had been invited by MOCA curator Jaime DeSimone to create a Project Atrium exhibit for the museum. That exhibit, “Movement 4,” opened to the public in the Atrium Gallery Saturday.

“It’s a unique space,” Fontanive said.

For many of the Project Atrium artists, the verticality of the 40-foot-tall Atrium Gallery is a challenge, DeSimone said.

But Fontanive said he liked the verticality. His sculpture — that’s what he considers “Movement 4” to be — will be suspended from the ceiling of the gallery, and will be about 25 feet high and 20 feet wide.

Fontanive said he also liked that “Movement 4” would be visible from multiple levels and angles since the Atrium Gallery can viewed from both the second and third floor galleries, as well as the staircases leading to them. And he liked the fact the walls of the Atrium Gallery are white.

“Movement 4” is a kinetic sculpture, one with moving parts. There’s a motor at the center of a group of suspended metal rods. Attached to those rods are 300 discs that are white on one side and brightly colored on the other side.

A series of 300 belts operated by the motor will turn those discs in a synchronized pattern so that sometimes only the white sides of the discs will be facing the viewer. Against the white background of the gallery wall, the sculpture will seem to almost disappear, Fontanive said. At other times, it will present a brightly colored abstract pattern. The sculpture will also make noise, clicking and chiming.

The movement will also create a shifting pattern of light and shadow on the rear wall of the gallery, DeSimone said.

“It’s almost like watching the gears of a clock,” she added.

Fontanive, who was born in 1977, studied for a master’s degree from 2003 to 2006 at the Royal College of Art, London. While there, he became interested in animated experimental film. That interest expanded into creating “moving objects, sculptures with moving parts.”

“Movement 4” is the fourth in a series of kinetic sculptures he began in 2008.

DeSimone said she was visiting a collector she knew in Massachusetts when she encountered “Movement 3.”

She was immediately attracted to the idea of asking Fontanive to create a larger version of his moving sculptures for MOCA’s Project Atrium, which three times a year invites artists to create works for the Atrium Gallery. Most of those works are site specific, designed to showcase the Atrium Gallery’s unusual dimensions.

DeSimone said she liked the fact Fontanive is “one of the leading kinetic artists now working. We’ve never had a kinetic exhibit as part of Project Atrium.”

DeSimone said that artistically, she sees Fontanive as “coming out of Alexander Calder,” the 20th century American sculptor known as the originator of the mobile, a type of moving sculpture made with delicately balanced or suspended shapes that moved in response to touch or air currents.

She added that one of the goals of Project Atrium is to showcase “emerging and mid-career artists,” a category into which Fontanive falls.

Charlie Patton: (904) 359-4413

PROJECT ATRIUM: MOVEMENT 4

Where: Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, 333 N. Laura St.

When: 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 5-9 p.m. Thursday and on the first Wednesday of each month; noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Through Feb. 1

Cost: $8 adults; $5 seniors, students, military and children 2-12; free to members, UNF students and from 5-9
p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month